Early
Australian English  the State of the Art

The
possible origins and developments of early Australian English
(AusE) are still under debate. Many different questions have been
asked. They can be summed up in the following way:

1.
How did AusE come to be a distinctive variety of English?

2.
What is the linguistic input of AusE?

3.
How is it possible that AusE is so remarkably uniform across a
whole continent?

4.
Where, when and how did the three sociolects (Broad, General and
Cultivated) arise?

Many
scholars have tackled these questions and have come up with a
number of answers. However, no consensus has been achieved yet.
This is because mostly Reason has formed the basis of
the answers. There are as yet too few empirical studies of early
AusE.

Although Reason is always a good
companion for the scholar, it cannot stand alone. Empirical
facts, especially the investigation of actual instances of early
AusE, must be an integral part for good answers to the
questions posed above. Thus Plato, the founder of Rational
Investigations, must be followed by Aristotle, the founder of
Empiricism. What answers have been given so far?

1.
How did AusE come to be a distinctive variety of English?

Basically there are
three different positions here. The majority view is that AusE is
the result of a mixing of dialects with Collins (1975) and, to
some extent, Horvath (1985) claiming that the mixing had already
taken place already in the greater London area while Bernard
(1969, 1981) and Trudgill (1986, the only one to take not only
pronunciation but also lexis and grammar into consideration)
contend that most of the mixing must have taken place on
Australian soil.

Turner (1960), Gunn (1972), Hammarström
(1980) and Cochrane (1989) believe in the direct
transplantation of a London dialect to Australia,
which has not changed much. As evidence they use investigations
of the phonological systems of present-dayBroad
AusE and present-day or earlier Cockney.
This seems not above criticism methodologically.

Mitchell (1995) shows his superior
historical insight when he suggests a compromise by pointing to
the fact that due to the Agrarian and the beginning Industrial
Revolution the regional dialects of England had already started
to break down in eighteenth and nineteenth century England. So
the dialects had already been mixed and levelled, especially in
the great urban centres, prior to the European settlement of
Australia. This process was then continued in the colonies.

2.
What linguistic input do we have?

AusE is undoubtedly
very closely related to the English spoken in south-eastern
England. But where did the first white Australians actually hail
from?

The most reliable figures about the origins
of the early Australians come from the counties of trial of the
convicts (cf. Robson 1955:155). The early statistical material
for the population in Australia is, however, very thin. The first
colonial counts, up to the 1850s, did little more than note
whether someone was born in Australia or not (cf. Price 1987:3).

Taking Robsons calculations we find
that 17 per cent of the male convicts were tried in London.
Lancashire accounted for 7, Dublin for 5, Yorkshire for 4 and
Warwickshire for 3 per cent. All other counties had 2 per cent or
less. Overall, 71 per cent of all male convicts had been tried in
England, 22 per cent in Ireland, 5 per cent in Scotland and the
rest overseas. A comparison of place of trial and place of birth
shows that at the country level the varations between these is
small (cf. Jupp 1989:24).

Considering the above facts, it seems
surprising that so much emphasis has always been laid on the
London heritage of AusE. Demographically the picture is much more
complicated.

a)
What did the Irish contribute?

According to Ramson
(1966), Bernard (1969) and many others, the Irish did not
contribute much to the formation of AusE, despite forming some 25
per cent of the white antipodean population in the nineteenth
century. Of late, several scholars have criticised this opinion.
Troy (1992:460) contends that no Irish influence has been found,
because no one has looked for it thoroughly. Horvath (1985:39)
and Trudgill (1986:139f) have provided lists of features that
could have originated in Irish English (IrE) or even Gaelic,
which was still spoken by a number of Irish in Australia.

OFarrell (1989, 1996) and Fitzpatrick
(1994) have shown the close family patterns which the Irish
maintained in Australia. Fritz (2000a,b and no date) has shown
that this could lead to a preservation of IrE elements. Taylor
(1992, 1998, 2001) and Lonergan (fc.) discuss lasting impacts on
AusE. A closer look at actual language data, an empirical
approach, could thus prove previous assumptions not to be
correct.

b) What is the
input of the convicts?

The proportion of
convicts and their contribution to early Australian English has
always been very much exaggerated. The numbers Ward (1958) gives
for the convicts and those of convict origin can be shown to be
misleading (Mitchell 1995:44) and were taken over too
uncritically by scholars like Horvath (1985), Gunn (1992) and
others.

Although some convict terms and even some
instances of 'cant' have entered AusE (cf. Langker 1980, 1981),
their homogeneity as a speech group, and thus their impact, has
been more surmised than proved (cf. Mitchell 1995:7). It is very
questionable if there was ever something like a homogeneous group
of convicts and/or ex-convicts who formed a coherent linguistic
community that itself was distinguished from the language of
those who had arrived free or were born free. The convicts came
from very diverse backgrounds, they did not live under one roof,
they could even be rather isolated from each other. Moreover, the
divisions between convicts, freed and free were not as sharp as
many assume and certainly much less so than in 'Merry ol
England'.

The protestations of some free immigrants
that the convicts and emancipist should be separated much
more from the rest of society were not effective. The rise of
many ex-convicts to respectable social status is testified in
numerous cases, e.g. the Reibey family as described by Irvine
(1992). Thomas Fellon's letter to his wife in 1835 praises the
good living-standard and opportunities for convicts and
ex-convicts. This would not have been possible if he, or all
convicts, had shown a use of language easily recognisable as
being the speech of a criminal and thus detested. Indeed, his
language is non-standard, but not in the way described by author
of 'cant' dictionaries.

Der mary, I never work one day but
fourteen days for myselfe since I been in this cuntry because it
is not allowed by Government but if i wonst got my liberty I cud
[...] ten shillings per day Der mary let me know in youre next
letter is my fathere live or know or did my sister go to meracar
or know Der mary this is fine cuntry is there is in the wourld
for ateing and drinking Der mary if you wore in this cuntry you
cud be worth pound per week but by owne labour [...].
<2-129>

Empirical investigation of frequencies of
convict terminology is asked for. Over and above that, actual
language use of convicts and ex-convicts should be compared with
that of other social groups before drawing far-reaching
conclusion about their contribution to the formation of AusE.

3.
How is it possible that AusE is so remarkably uniform across the
continent?

It has always been
thought remarkable that AusE is so uniform all over the
continent. Even the three acknowledged sociolects of AusE seem to
be the same everywhere. There are only a few regionalized lexical
items which make a distinction between speakers of AusE from
different states possible. This has been called into question
recently.

Basically, there are three theories that try
to explain this uniformity. Those who believe in a direct
transplantation of London English to the antipodes see no problem
at all. The second, and strongest group, sees AusE originating in
the early phase of the colony in a kind of 'Sydney mixing-bowl'.
This amalgam would then spread and level out all other influences
through the astonishing mobility of Australians and the fact that
'new chums' always try to blend in linguistically with the 'old
hands'. Görlach (1991:150) questions the 'Sydney mixing-bowl'
approach in the following way:

1. As the spread
of settlements shows, the early speech communities in the east
were separated by hundreds of miles from those in the west, and
what internal movements there were can hardly have sufficed to
spread, say, Sydney norms throughout the continent; and

2. convicts and their
descendants formed the majority in NSW until at least 1840 [this
again repeats Ward's misleading numbers], when transportation to
this state was ended. Apart from NSW, only Tasmania (from 1804 to
1852) and Western Australia received convicts, but WA did so only
from 1850-68. This means that their speech cannot possibly have
had any large impact on the entire WA speech community - as
indeed the contemporary Irish immigrants failed to have.

It is true that the early communities were
very far apart. But Hobart and Norfolk, the earliest settlements
outside the Sydney area were settled from Sydney and contact
between all of them was frequent. The second point Görlach takes
up can be easily refuted, too. It stems from his assumption about
an alleged uniformity of convict speech and its lasting impact on
AusE. He even seems to believe that the convicts of Western
Australia (WA) spoke exactly the same, and to his mind very
distinct, English as the ones who had reached Australia's shores
62 years earlier. Undeniably the settlement of WA was very
isolated and could well have developed its own dialect. But
whatever dialect there may have been was surely swamped by the
gold rushes of the 1890s.

A rather isolated position is taken up by
Bernard (1969). He also thinks of a mixing-bowl, but in his
opinion, this operated in all the major sea-ports (Port Jackson,
Hobart, Port Phillip, etc.) and since we have the same linguistic
input everywhere, the outcome of the mixing was the same and
later also homogenized by the above mentioned high mobility.

Although this question seems by and large
settled, there are some points which warrant closer
investigation, in fact investigation which can only be done
empirically. It should prove very rewarding to study the actual
linguistic accommodation processes taking place in Sydney and
elsewhere. Another point worthy of interest is the study of early
language use in South Australia (SA) and WA, the two colonies
where local dialects seem likeliest. In order to do this we have
again to take recourse to empirical data, nothing else will
suffice.

4.
Where, when and how did the three sociolects (Broad, General and
Cultivated) arise?

The existence of three
sociolects of AusE has been convincingly shown by the pioneering
work of Mitchell and Delbridge (1965). All of these, Broad,
General and Cultivated AusE, are very similar and movement from
one variety to the other seems easy (Bernard 1969:70). The
question of the origin of the sociolects is, however, a very
contentious issue.

Cochrane (1989) and Horvath (1985) believe
that the sociolects, at least Broad and Cultivated were there
from the beginning. Görlach (1991) also talks of two sociolects,
although he remains cautious about the supposed sharp divisions
between the two speech communities. According to Horvath, General
developed later when social class barriers broke down in
Australia and the speakers of the two original sociolects mixed.
This assumption is based on the view of early Australia as a
sharply divided society, where brutally treated criminals could
never be the equals of free immigrants. This clearly contradicts
historical fact.

Borrie (1994:34f), for example, presents
figures, collected in 1821 by an Emancipist Committee protesting
against alleged attempts to restrict their rights, that show that
they had twice the number of sheep and colonial vessels, three
times more land under cultivation and four times more town houses
than the free immigrants. Of course there were different
sociolects (as well as dialects) in early Australia. But it is
also very clear that these sociolects do not correspond to
todays sociolects.

Influential historians like Robson (1955),
Shaw (1966) and Clark (1975, 1977) have depicted convicts as
monstrous, lacking education, moral standards or the ability to
love their children. However, a modern generation of scholars has
shown a very different picture. Indeed, what Shaw, Robson and
Clark have to say about the convicts seems to reveal more about
them than about the transportees. Nicholas & Shergold
(1988:5f) rightly state: For example, even though [Manning]
Clark found that the transported criminals had surprisingly high
levels of literacy, he argued that the criminal class was
characterised by mental imbecility, low cunning and ignorance.
The fact that the percentage of [ ] skilled urban trades
people, was higher than the percentage of labourers and
agricultural labourers combined, is ignored. In his 37-page
analysis of Who are the Convicts?, A.G.L. Shaw barely
mentions their occupational backgrounds. And the most thorough
and careful quantitative study by Lloyd Robson displays a near
total disregard for the statistical evidence on occupations.
[ ]

Much of the analysis of the convict system
in Australia rests on two assumptions by historians; that the
organisation of forced convict labour differed significantly from
free labour; and that convictism was inefficient. Both
assumptions have received unanimous assent; neither assumption
has been explicitly tested. Convicts were not treated too badly,
divisions were not as rigid as post-convict era literary writings
(such as the ones by Marcus Clarke in the 1870s and Price Warung
in the 1890s and others) suggest (cf. Kociumbas 1992:257;
Nicholas & Shergold 1988:11). Australian society,
including the convicts, was better educated than the overall
population of the British Isles (cf. Cleverly, 1971:134; Jupp,
1989:555; Nicholas & Shergold, 1988:9).

As shown above, class distinctions were by
far cry not as rigid in Australia than in Great Britain. So the
sometimes encountered criticism of the rise of convicts and
emancipists reflects more the fears of middle-class people who
are not sure of their standing than the reality of early
Australian society. This breaking down of class barriers is
confirmed in the sources. John Maxwell, an Irish immigrant,
writes in 1884:

I saw M. Hawthorn [his social superior]
today. He was telling me he had got a situation. [...]. He is
very sociable here and stops and shakes hands with either Hugh or
I when he meets us but Australia and the crossing of the line
makes a great change on people's sociability. <4-076>

Another argument against Horvath's
hypothesis runs as follows. How should it be possible that there
were two or three sociolects from the beginning which all evolved
in the same direction, becoming ever more similar, with no common
model to aim at? Did Governor Macquarie (with his Scottish burr)
or Governor Bourke (with his Anglo-Irish accent) speak Cultivated
AusE or a proto-form of that? Certainly not. People of this class
either left Australia, and thus had no lasting linguistic impact,
or, if they stayed and made Australia their home, assimilating
their language slowly towards an arising accepted standard. The
examples of Macquarie and Bourke also show that even England's
upper class was not speaking with a unified accent, well into the
19th century not even using a unified spelling or
grammar, until the establishment of certain codes at public
schools furthered the rise of RP later.

Bernard (1969, 1981; supported by Gunn 1972)
claims that Broad AusE was there from very early on and social
pressures to adapt the language led to the emergence of General
and from that to Cultivated. Mitchell (1995:61) and others are
extremely sceptical of such a course of development, since the
social forces must have been extraordinary and yet only
pertaining to a limited number of people. Moreover,
phonologically nothing inherent Broad suggests a logical
development into General.

Convicts, freed, free, soldiers,
pastoralists and others, they all came from similar geographical
and dialectal backgrounds. They all contributed to the emergence
of Broad Australian and provided the language pattern that was
then indigenised by the first generations of the native borns.
Mitchell (1995:62) therefore claims convincingly that external
influences must have brought about the existence of General
alongside an already established Broad. He suggests that this
influence can be found in the second wave of British immigration
beginning in 1830 and greatly expanded in the gold rush period.
The newcomers were simply too many to be assimilated completely.
Cultivated, according to Mitchell (1995:63), developed later out
of group choices.

The most convincing theory about the
development of the sociolects of AusE has been put forth by
Mitchell (1995). It is most in line with historical facts and
reasonable interpretation of these. Still, it is only a theory
and only an empirical investigation could deepen our
understanding of what happened exactly in the formation processes
of AusE. What has to be looked at is the actual existence
of sharply divided social groups using linguistically definable
sociolects.